Department and other types of retail stores frequently display products on perimeter or interior walls specially configured for the purpose. Such products may be hung from hooks or brackets or displayed upon shelves which, themselves, are supported by brackets projecting from the wall. Often, such speciallyconfigured walls are provided and installed by contractors or by contracting manufacturers on a bid basis.
Special walls constructed for the particular purpose of product display are said (in the vernacular of the industry) to include "wall standards," "key stripping" or "in-line standards." As used in the industry (and as used herein) the term "standard" is a noun referring to a vertically-oriented, relatively long, narrow strip, usually metal, which has spaced elongate slots along its length. Ends of support hooks or brackets are inserted into such slots to hold products or shelves. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,848,364 (Costruba); 3,193,885 (Gartner et al.); 3,305,981 (Biggs et al.); 4,588,156 (Doke et al.); 4,535,525 (Varon et al.); 4,688,750 (Teague et al.); 2,040,385 (Kellogg); 4,918,879 (Bodurow et al.); 3,859,765 (Nelsson) all show types of wall systems used to mount wall standards.
Sometimes the wall is constructed so that the standard is concealed except to close inspection; in other wall arrangements, the standard is surface mounted. The former type is most often used commercially; the latter type is often used in private residences to make book shelves and the like. With surface mounted standards, the slotted standard is merely an "add-on" to an existing conventional wall. Of course, a benefit of wall standards is that hooks and brackets can be placed at any of a number of locations along the standard--and can just as easily be re-located as displays of products are modified to meet changing marketing needs.
Design, manufacture and installation of existing wall standard mounting systems, especially those used commercially in department stores and the like, are impeded in certain ways. One impediment is that some known systems require an existing wall for system mounting. To put it another way, such wall display systems must be installed according to the dictates of the existing building rather than in locations most effective from a display standpoint.
Another obstacle is that, characteristically, known wall standard systems are very labor intensive and require a good deal of on-site "cut and fit" by skilled, well-compensated persons. To state it differently, such systems do not lend themselves well to partial, more rapid wall fabrication at a remote manufacturing site where proper tools, jigs and the like are available.
Still another disadvantage of some known wall standard systems is that even though the fabricated wall system is substantially entirely made at a remote factory site, there is still a good deal of labor that must be expended on site to finish the task. Earlier workers in this field have not appreciated how a wall system can be configured to simply "clip-mount" wall panels without resorting to screws or other similar fasteners for that purpose.
The inventive system, summarized and described in detail below, resolves many of these disadvantages in a unique way.